For such a remote, isolated location, the South Pole tends to have a lot of activity most weeks. Last week, IceCube’s winterovers were treated to a middle-of-the-night (!) page for issues on a couple of DOMs, but power cycling resolved things so at least they were able to get back to sleep pretty quickly. The winterovers are paged automatically for detector problems so that concerns can be dealt with in a timely manner. A few other troubleshooting efforts and some planned maintenance tasks kept them busy the rest of the week. For the week’s end…Christmas in July festivities peaked with a fancy dinner and party. There was lots of food in the galley and holiday decorations in the gym. The “Santa house” took a little bit of a beating (before and after photos below), but that’s what happens when you try to see how many people can fit inside a small cardboard house.
